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MEET A LEAF: Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja

2/22/2021

Dr. Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja is an Associate professor in the Department of Agroforestry Technology and Science and Genetics at the Castilla La Mancha University (Spain). @MElucasborja

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
When I think of ecohydrology, many different effects and functions come to my mind. Initially, ecohydrology is related to the effects of hydrological processes on the distribution, structure, and function of ecosystems. And more in detail to forest ecosystems, in which I work. Secondly, I also consider the effects of living parts of ecosystems on water cycle and water movement among atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My BS is in forestry from the Castilla La Mancha University (Spain) and my MS is in forestry science from Lleida University (Spain). My PhD is in two joint programs: the first in Economy and Social Science from Polytechnic University of Valencia (Spain) and the second in Forestry from Castilla La Mancha University. I also spent one postdoc year in UTAD (Portugal).

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Since 2005, I have been working on different research projects and teaching activities related to forest management and soil hydrology at Castilla La Mancha University (Spain). I developed my doctoral thesis in Cuenca Mountains working on Spanish black pine (Pinus nigra Arn. ssp salzmannii) natural regeneration and sustainable forest management. After this period studying and reading very interesting papers, I started to think about and work on how forest management may influence water cycle in Mediterranean mountain areas. It is well known how and to what extent the hydrology of the Mediterranean forests strictly depends on infiltration capacity and surface conditions of soils. These features are clearly driven first by the soil characteristics (e.g., texture and organic matter, but also the interactions of soil characteristics with plant composition can play a significant role. Nowadays, I am focusing on the effects of forest stand composition and soil properties on water repellency and hydraulic conductivity in Mediterranean forests, among others (including wildfire affected areas and soil hydrology).

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Overall, I think we need to advance efforts to identify differences among key parameters driving the hydrological response of Mediterranean forests according to their biodiversity and soil characteristics. More research is certainly needed, in particular about litter quality (only indirectly considered in this study within the physico-chemical and covers of forest soils) and its feedback with water repellency, since litter quality certainly may influence forest hydrology.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
I have read many interesting papers and there are many important pieces of work, which all together generate a valuable and attractive ecohydrology science. Talking about one of my favorites, I would like to mention the one presented by John T Van Stan and others in 2020 (Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-29702-2_14). It is titled as “Precipitation Partitioning—Hydrologic Highways Between Microbial Communities of the Plant Microbiome?” This book describes all important water cycle processes in vegetated ecosystems including interception, throughfall, and stemflow and how all these processes may connect microbial communities from the atmospheric boundary layer to the bedrock face via hydrologic ways.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Being at the forest close to the wild and trees are the things I love the most. Life and happiness are about sharing special moments with friends and family in the middle of nature.

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MEET A LEAF: Tyler Beddingfield

2/15/2021

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Tyler Beddingfield (he/him) is an Undergraduate Researcher in the Watershed Hydrology Lab at the University of Wyoming, Department of Ecosystem Science & Management. @smokedtaters

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
To put it broadly, ecohydrology is the science that aims to describe the interactions between water and living components of ecosystems. I think a lot of people tend to think of this as plant/water interactions, but I think just about any relation between living organisms and water can be part of ecohydrology. For example, someone might want to study the way precipitation infiltrates and flows through preferential pathways (i.e., gopher holes) and that would be ecohydrology. Another example, someone might want to study the way algae grows in urban stormwater storage areas and affects those ecosystems, and that would be ecohydrology, too.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
I am graduating in May with a B.S. in Rangeland Ecology & Watershed Management and Environment & Natural Resources. I intend to pursue an M.S. in Hydrology in the near future.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I was introduced to wildland hydrology in my coursework a few years ago, and I really fell in love with trying to understand how water moves through and behaves in ecosystems. I also realized I was quite good at both understanding the conceptual and technical aspects of the material, so I dived into the literature.

Hydrology offered me something I was not getting with the rangeland ecology components of my education: the idea that I can be myself. Most of my peers that I interact with do not come from very diverse backgrounds, whether that is cultural, ethnic, or ideological. As a queer transman often without community like me, I forced myself to be a cheap copy of [what I view as] the typical range student: white, male, listens to country music, and really likes cattle. I sacrificed a lot of who I was to put this façade on for others. There are a lot of great people in the range sciences, but I think that there are some significant barriers to participation and success as an underrepresented rangeland ecologist. When I found hydrology, I realized that I found a discipline that was more accepting of differences and that I could be my true self. I have gained so much confidence and self-respect since I started working in this field. This confidence has actually encouraged me to stay with the Society for Range Management and help the discipline develop a more inclusive culture so that people like me do not feel like they have to leave the discipline to be successful.

In 2018, I asked my wildland hydrology professor, Dr. Fabian Nippgen, what I could do to develop my skills as a hydrologist. That conversation turned into a 2-year undergraduate research position in his lab. I currently work on assessing riparian vegetation with a variety of methods, including traditional ground-based sampling and drone technology. It is the best job I have ever had, and I am so glad to be working with such a great team that really values what I have to offer and takes time to mentor me. That being said, my time with the lab is quickly coming to an end, and I am on the prowl for a new position that will allow me to further develop my skills and expertise as a snow and ecohydrologist!

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
Although maybe not necessarily emerging, I think being able to quantify water and energy budgets on rangelands and forested ecosystems is something that ecohydrologists are in a unique position to address. It seems that even though our ability to model these ecosystem processes is pretty good, our ability to actually observe and measure hydrological components of ecosystems, especially precipitation and evapotranspiration, is something we have room to improve upon.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
I have one favorite ecohydrology paper, only because I have needed to refer back to it so many times as a model for my work, called “Evaluation of a technique for measuring canopy volume of shrubs” by Mark S. Thorne, Quentin D. Skinner, Michael A. Smith, J. Daniel Rodgers, Wiliam Laycock, and Sule A. Cerecki (2002). Essentially, the paper describes a ground-based sampling method for quantifying shrub volume, which is a metric my research is attempting to quantify for willows (Salix spp.). I also have another favorite hydrology paper called “A philosophical basis for hydrological uncertainty” by Grey S. Nearing, Yudong Tian, Hoshin V. Gupta, Martyn P. Clark, Kenneth W. Harrison, and Steven V. Weijis (2016). I found this paper while attempting to write a paper on the epistemology of hydrology for a class focused on epistemology, pedagogy, and philosophy within natural resource sciences. This paper basically describes that the way hydrologists understand uncertainty can be different based on your assumptions about hydrology; basically, in order to really understand uncertainty in our science, we need to be on the same page about what our fundamental concepts and assumptions are. At the time I first read this paper, I had not taken calculus I and II, so when the authors discuss probability theory as an example, I really had no idea what they were talking about. That being said, I began to see art in math and hydrology where I could not understand the language (that language being calculus). I would have to say that a large reason why I love hydrology so much is because of this paper. It inspired me to learn the fundamentals and give myself the foundation for advanced understanding of hydrologic processes. In general, I prefer to learn advanced material first so I can ask questions about the way things work, then I build the foundation of my knowledge from those curiosities. Hydrology allowed me to do just that.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Apart from ecohydrology, I love to relax at home with my dog, Smokey. I also play guitar and listen to way too much Jimmy Eat World. In the summers I go driving and hiking in the mountains outside Laramie and nerd out at cool rocks I find. While I take classes, I really like applying my research skills to addressing both the impacts of water scarcity on Indigenous Nations and the impacts of climate change on snowpacks. I also enjoy learning about glaciers! Sleep is probably one of my favorite activities.

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MEET A LEAF: Asko Noormets

2/8/2021

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Dr. Asko Noormets is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology at Texas A&M University.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
The term “ecohydrology” relates primarily to my good colleagues Jean-Christophe Domec and Ge Sun, working with whom has shaped my thinking of plant growth and plant-environment interactions. It was in collaboration with them that I learned to appreciate the critical role that xylem anatomy plays in plant-environment interactions, and the mechanisms and time scales of coupling between the stomata and plant hydraulic conductance. While my focus has been on carbon fluxes, the role of water availability was often central. Even in wetland forests, water availability can constrain plant gas exchange. Plant water relations is also the topic that engages the students in my Forest Ecology class the most. Of the many feedbacks and interactions covered in the course, the complexity and far-reaching implications of plant water transport amaze and resonate with the most.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My BS is in Biology from the University of Tartu in Estonia (with semester-long stints in the University of Joensuu in Finland, and the Swedish Agricultural University in Uppsala, Sweden), and MS and PhD in Forest Science from Michigan Technological University.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
Among my first projects were plant gas exchange measurements with Olevi Kull and Anu Sôber back in Estonia (using a home-made gas exchange system that filled half an office). “Stomatal conductance” was among the first phrases that I spoke as a budding scientist. Starting from there, and throughout the rest of my academic career, water availability has always been the factor without which one cannot talk about carbon exchange. Although never explicitly my main focus, moisture effects on photosynthesis, growth and allocation have been inseparable from the carbon fluxes themselves.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
A growing number of recent reports have underlined the tightness of coupling between water, carbon and nutrient cycles. To me, the soil-plant-environment system serves as an effective model of the entire world. Though conceptually simple, many aspects of this self-stabilizing system remain poorly understood. I think the coming decades will elucidate many of the connections, and a lot of it has to do with quantitative and system-level understanding of belowground processes – the interactions between the live, the dead, and the mineral.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
For the ecohydrology work that I have participated in, the most influential study that we have cited is perhaps the concept of reference conductance proposed by Ram Oren and colleagues (Oren R, Sperry JS, Katul GG, Pataki DE, Ewers BE, Phillips N, Schafer KVR (1999) Survey and synthesis of intra- and interspecific variation in stomatal sensitivity to vapour pressure deficit. Plant, Cell and Environment 22: 1515-1526, doi: 10.1046/j.1365-3040.1999.00513.x). It has been used to great effect in local and global context, and served as the foundation for a number of other more recent landmark papers.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
These days, I spend a fair amount of time improving my frisbee skills with my daughter, going for the occasional run, and learning the piano.

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MEET A LEAF: María Poca

2/1/2021

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Dr. María Poca is a Research Scientist at the Environmental Studies Group of the Institute of Applied Mathematics of San Luis, National University of San Luis and National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina.

What does ecohydrology mean to you?
Ecohydrology to me is the watery dialogue between what is alive and what is not, through spatial and temporal scales. The ‘living’ component is the biota, including humans. I really enjoy reading this section of ‘meet a leaf’ since it always offers different perspectives on what Ecohydrology ‘is’. This reflects how broad the field is, bringing together researchers, tools and backgrounds from quite different disciplines – to me one of the most fun aspects of Ecohydrology.

What are your undergraduate and graduate degrees in?
My undergraduate degree is in Biology from the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. This is a five-year program with a thesis, so is not mandatory to do a Master’s degree before getting into a PhD-program, reason why I directly went for a PhD after my undergrad. My Ph.D. is in Biological Sciences, from the same university as my undergrad. My PhD thesis was in Ecohydrology, where I aimed to understand how livestock and fire alter vegetation, soil and water dynamics at the plot scale in the highland ecosystems of central Argentina, which are a critical water source for the inhabitants, agriculture and industry of the region.

How did you arrive at working in/thinking about ecohydrology?
I grew up going frequently to the mountains and its streams, loving being outdoors, and since I was very young I wanted to be a Biologist and do plant-related field research. I chose to do my undergrad thesis on Plant Ecology, particularly on how we can scale up single species attributes such as leaf traits and litter decomposition to ecosystem-level processes. While picking up leaf litter across the highlands of central Argentina I experienced several fog events. This made me wonder and get fascinated by how relevant fog may be for plants physiology, and even more puzzling, for the hydrology of this region – although I had almost zero formal hydrological training. At that time, my undergrad thesis advisor, Ana Cingolani, was just starting a new research project on a new field (Ecohydrology) and she offered me to pursue a PhD with her in this topic, what thrilled me. Thus, I arrived to working in Ecohydrology somehow by chance, but feeling it was a completely natural step. Now my research is focused on water flowpaths, magnitudes and velocities through the ‘soil-plant-rock-stream-atmosphere’ continuum at scales that go all the way from plants in pots to catchments and subcontinents.

What do you see as an important emerging area of ecohydrology?
I can think of various, most of them with humans as the focus. One of these ‘still’ emerging areas, I would say is better understanding how humans alter the water cycle through climate, vegetation and soil changes; as well as how can we restore these components and, through them, the overall ecohydrological functioning of watersheds. Another one that is very important, and that I am also very interested in, is water provisioning services in dry regions. How subhumid-to-arid mountains sustain base flows? How land use and climate change menace (or perhaps improve) water provisioning in quantity and quality in these regions? Related to this, socioecohydrology and the ecohydrology of urban systems are also emerging areas that I believe will keep growing as cities keep attracting more and more ‘ecohydrological’ attention with their channeled streams, flooding and sewage problems, intense use of non-native trees and gardens that consume more water, among others. Probably doing so by including citizen science and approaches developed by social scientists is the way to go, and I need to learn that fast.

Do you have a favorite ecohydrology paper? Describe/explain.
So many! One of my favorites is one of my very firsts reads in Ecohydrology: Sampurno Bruijnzeel’s ‘Hydrological functions of tropical forests: not seeing the soil for the trees?’ (Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment, 2004). This paper analyzes all evidence at the time on how land use changes altering forest cover may impact water yields in tropical regions. This is a follow up from a previous publication of his on 1989 ((De)forestation and dry season flow in the tropics: a closer look, Journal of Tropical Forest Science) that is also great. Although he focuses on tropical forests and I work on subtropical-highland ecosystems, this paper and his ‘infiltration-evapotranspiration trade-off hypothesis’ was foundational for my PhD thesis and most of the research I continued doing since then. There is still a lively debate and contradictory results regarding the underlying mechanisms of forest cover impact on streamflow. Another really good paper that was crucial for me is Heidi Asbjornsen’s and colleagues ‘Ecohydrological advances and applications in plant–water relations research: a review’ (Journal of Plant Ecology, 2011). In this paper the authors synthesize the theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches in Ecohydrology across scales, which I found very insightful as a graduate student. As a side note, I had the chance to interact with the first authors of these two papers, Sampurno and Heidi, which has been an incredibly enriching experience, scientifically and personally.

What do you do for fun (apart from ecohydrology)?
Being at the mountains, hiking, camping, traveling and photographing are the things I love the most, especially when shared with my partner. As well as visiting my family (playing with my niece and nephew is a blast!) and drinking ‘mate’ with friends - you might need to read this to understand what mate is: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_(drink). I also like swimming, baking and watercolor painting.

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MEET A LEAF: Manuel Esteban Lucas-Borja

MEET A LEAF: Tyler Beddingfield

MEET A LEAF: Asko Noormets

MEET A LEAF: María Poca

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